Monsters of Men (66 page)

But every now and again, every once in a while, his Noise will open and a memory will surface, a memory of me and him when we first met Hildy, or of him and Ben and Cillian, where Todd is younger than I ever knew him and the three of them are going fishing in the swamp outside of old Prentisstown and Todd’s Noise just
glows
with happiness–

And my heart beats a little faster with hope–

But then his Noise fades and he’s silent again–

I sigh and lean back on the Spackle-made chair, under cover of a large Spackle-made tent, next to a Spackle-made fire, all of it surrounding a Spackle-made stone tablet where Todd rests and has rested since we got him back from the beach.

A pack of Spackle cure is pasted onto where his chest is scarred and burnt–

But healing.

And we wait.

I
wait.

Wait to see if he’ll come back to us.

Outside the tent, a circle of Spackle surround us without moving, their Noises forming some kind of shield. The Pathways’ End, Ben says it’s called, says it’s where he slept all those months while his bullet wound healed, all those months beyond sight of the living, on the very edge of death, the bullet wound that should have killed him but didn’t because of Spackle intervention.

Todd was dead. I was sure of it then, I’m sure of it now.

I watched him die, watched him die in my arms, something that makes me upset even now and so I don’t want to talk about that any more–

But Ben put snow on Todd’s chest, cooling him down fast, cooling down the terrible burns that were paralysing him, cooling down an already cold Todd, an already
exhausted
Todd who’d been fighting the Mayor, and Ben says Todd’s Noise must have stopped because Todd had become used to not broadcasting it, that Todd must not have actually died, more
shut down
from the shock and the cold, and then the further cold of the snow kept him there, kept him just enough there that he wasn’t quite dead–

But I know otherwise.

I know he left us, I know he didn’t want to, I know he held on as tight as he could, but I know he left us.

I watched him go.

But maybe he didn’t go far.

Maybe I held him there, maybe me and Ben did, just close enough that maybe he didn’t go too far.

Maybe not so far that he couldn’t come back.

Tired?
Ben says, entering the tent.

“I’m okay,” I say, setting down Todd’s mother’s journal, which I’ve read to him every day these past few weeks, hoping he’ll hear me.

Every day hoping he’ll come back from wherever he’s gone.

How’s he doing?
Ben asks, walking over to Todd, putting a hand on his arm.

“The same,” I say.

Ben turns back to me.
He’ll come back, Viola. He will.

“We hope.”

I came back. And I didn’t have you to call for me.

I look away from him. “You came back changed.”

It was 1017 who suggested the Pathways’ End and Ben agreed with him and since New Prentisstown was nothing but a new lake at the bottom of a new falls and since the alternative was locking Todd in a bed in the scout ship until the new convoy arrived – a method favoured quite strongly by Mistress Lawson, who’s now head of pretty much everything she doesn’t let Wilf or Lee run – I reluctantly agreed with Ben.

Who nods at what I said, looking back down at Todd.
I expect he’ll be changed, too.
He smiles back at me.
But I seem to be doing okay.

I watch Ben these days and I wonder if I’m watching the future of New World, if every man will eventually give himself over so totally to the voice of the planet, keeping his individuality but allowing in all the individualities of everyone else at the same time and willingly joining the Spackle, joining the rest of the world.

Not all men will, I know that, not with how much they valued the cure.

And what about the women?

Ben is certain women
do
have Noise and that if men can silence theirs, why shouldn’t women be able to
un
-silence
theirs
?

He wonders if I might be willing to give it a try.

I don’t know.

Why can’t we learn to live with how we are? And whatever anybody chooses is okay by the rest of us?

Either way, we’re about to have 5000 opportunities to find out.

The convoy just confirmed,
Ben says.
The ships entered orbit an hour ago, The landing ceremony will go ahead this afternoon as planned.
He arches an eyebrow at me.
You coming?

I smile. “Bradley can represent me just fine. Are
you
going?”

He looks back at Todd.
I have to,
he says.
I have to introduce them to the Sky. I’m the conduit between the settlers and the Land, whether I like it or not.
He brushes Todd’s hair away from his forehead.
But I’ll come back here straight after.

I haven’t left Todd’s side since we brought him here and won’t until he wakes, not even for new settlers. I even made Mistress Lawson come to me to confirm what the Mayor said about the cure. She tested it inside and out, and he was telling the truth. Every woman is healthy now.

1017 isn’t yet, though.

The infection seems to spread more slowly through him, and he’s declining to take the cure, saying he’ll suffer the pain of the band until Todd wakes up, as a reminder of all that was, of all that
almost
was, and of what we should all never return to.

I can’t help it. I’m a little glad that it still hurts him.

The Sky would like to visit,
Ben says lightly, as if he could already read the Noise I don’t have.

“No.”

He’s arranged all this, Viola. If we get Todd back–

“If,” I say. “That’s the key word, isn’t it?”

It’ll work,
he says.
It
will.

“Fine,” I say. “When it does, then we can ask Todd if he wants to see the Spackle who put him here in the first place.”

Viola–

I smile to stop him from the argument we’ve already had two dozen times already. An argument about how I can’t quite forgive 1017 yet.

And maybe never.

I know he often waits outside the Pathways’ End, asking Ben how Todd is. I can hear him sometimes. Right now, though, all I hear is Angharrad, munching on grass, patiently waiting with us for her boy colt.

The Sky will be a better leader for all this,
Ben says.
We might actually be able to live with them in peace. Maybe even in the paradise we always wanted.

“
If
Mistress Lawson and the convoy rework the cure for the Noise,” I say. “
If
the men and women who land don’t feel threatened by being so out-numbered by the native species.
If
there’s always enough food to go around–”

Try to have some hope, Viola,
he says.

And there’s that word again.

“I do,” I say. “But I’m giving it all to Todd right now.”

Ben looks back down at his son.
He’ll come back to us.

I nod to agree, but we don’t know that he will, not for sure.

But we hope.

And that hope is so delicate, I’m scared to death of letting it out.

So I keep quiet.

And I wait.

And I hope.

What part have you reached?
Ben asks, nodding at the journal.

“I’m near the end again,” I say.

He comes away from Todd and sits down in the other Spackle-made chair next to me.
Read it through,
he says.
And then we can start all over where his ma was full of optimism.

There’s a smile on his face and so much tender hope in his Noise that I can’t help but smile back.

He’ll hear you, Viola. He’ll hear you and he’ll come back to us.

And we look at Todd again, laid out on the stone tablet, warmed by the fire, Spackle healing pastes on the wound in his chest, his Noise ticking in and out of hearing like a barely-remembered dream.

“Todd,” I whisper. “Todd?”

And then I pick up the journal again.

And I continue reading.

Is this right?

      I blink and I’m in one memory, like this one here, back in a classroom in old Prentisstown before Mayor Prentiss closed down the school and we’re learning about why the settlers came here in the first place–

            And then here I am again, in this one, where she and I are sleeping in an abandoned windmill just after leaving Farbranch and the stars are coming out and she asks me to sleep outside because my Noise is keeping her awake–

                  Or now here, with Manchee, with my brilliant, brilliant dog, when he takes the burning ember into his mouth and sets off to start a fire, the fire that will let me save–

Let me save–

   Are you there?

Are you
there
?

                                                      (Viola?)

And then sometimes there are memories of things I never saw–

   Spackle families in huts in a vast desert I didn’t even know existed but that now, right here, as I stand in it, I know it’s on the other side of New World, as far away as you can get but I’m inside the Spackle voices and I’m hearing what they say,
seeing
it,
understanding
it even tho the language ain’t mine and I can see that they know about the men on the other side of the planet, that they know everything about us that the Spackle near us do, that the voice of this world circles it, reaches into every corner and if we could just–

      Or here, here I am on a hilltop next to someone whose face I just about reckernize (Luke? Les? Lars? His name is there, just there, just outta reach–) but I reckernize the blindness in his eyes and I reckernize the face of the man next to him who I know is
seeing
for him somehow and they’re taking the weapons away from an army and they’re sealing ’em in a mine and they’d rather just destroy the whole lot of ’em but the voices around ’em all want the weapons there, just in case, just in case things go wrong, but the seeing man is telling the blind man that maybe there’s hope anyway–

         Or here, too, here I am, looking down from a hilltop as a huge ship, bigger than a whole town, flies overhead and comes in for a landing–

            And at the same time I’m having a memory of being next to a creek bed and there’s a baby Spackle playing and there are men coming outta the woods and they’re dragging the mother off and the baby is crying and the men come back and pick him up and load him on a cart with other babies and I know this is a memory that ain’t mine and that the baby is, the baby Spackle is–

And sometimes it’s just dark–

      –sometimes there’s nothing but voices I can’t quite hear, voices just beyond reach and I’m alone in the darkness and it feels like I’ve been here for a long, long time and I–

I can’t remember my name sometimes–

Are you there?

      Viola?

And I don’t remember who Viola is–

      Only that I need to find her–

            That she’s the only one who’ll save me–

She’s the only one who
can–

      Viola?

Viola?

“
. . . my son, my beautiful son . . .”

      And there!

            Like that!

                     Sometimes there it is in the middle of the darkness, in the middle of the memories, in the middle of wherever I am, doing whatever I’m doing, sometimes even in the middle of the million voices that create the ground I walk on–

      Sometimes I hear–

            “. . .
I wish yer pa were here to see you, Todd . . .”